Ballistic charge-carrier transport in semiconductor point contacts

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Abstract
Investigations of Joule heat generated in the vicinity of well-defined semiconducting microcontacts indicate the existence of a Knudsen effect in solids, in analogy to the Kundsen flow in gases, provided the contact diameter is sufficiently small compared to the mean free path of the carriers. The Joule heat is produced asymmetrically in the downstream part of the constriction, independently of the semiconducting material, type of electronic carrier, and carrier doping. Our experiments with n-type Si, p-type Si, and n-type GaAs show that this dimensionality effect is a general phenomenon in reduced geometries and that ballistic carrier transport is intimately correlated with asymmetric heat production.